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The Senate Republicans and Democrats unveiled their committee assignments today and there was no sight of the independent Democratic conference members—Sens. Jeff Klein, David Carlucci, David Valesky and Diane Savino.

Sen. Thomas Libous, the deputy majority leader and a Binghamton Republican, didn’t rule out that the Democrats would receive some sort of committee post.

“Those things have not been discussed yet,” Libous said. “Quite frankly, we’re still trying to work through this. We’re still trying to figure out how this works with a Republican majority conference, a Democrat minority conference and a independent Democrat conference.”

There’s been talk of a $3 million allocation for the independent conference, but Libous said there was no established figure as to how much the breakaway Democrats would receive in terms of an office budget.

“Right now they’re being handled as any other Democrat,” Libous said. “Each of them will get a $350,000 allotment and we are reviewing internally how they handle that.”

“There’s a lot of talk of an allocation, there have been no definitive numbers established,” he added. “I believe when that time comes there should be no reason to hide that.”

He also confirmed that the independent conference’s leader, Jeff Klein, received Libous’ Capitol office: “One of the reasons for that is across the hall there is a large conference room so they can have a meeting place.”

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